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20mph_415x275.jpgBristol Cycling Campaign urges people to sign pro-20mph zone petition
Bristol Cycling Campaign has backed a petition urging the city council to keep a 20mph speed limit in residential areas amid calls for it to be scrapped, saying that opposition to the speed limit is based on "misinformed rubbish."
More than 7,000 people have signed a petition launched in March this year calling for the limit, introduced by Mayor George Ferguson, to be scrapped.
The petition claims that the extending such a limit across the city is “completely ludicrous,” saying that while “no driver objects to a 20mph limit near a school for example but a blanket roll out is totally absurd.”
It adds that “roads will only be made more dangerous with frustrated drivers and people watching the speedo rather than where they're going.”
A rival petition, now backed by Bristol Cycling Campaign, was launched in June and has more than 1,000 supporters to date.
That petition says: “We are convinced that Bristol's narrow streets and roads in densely populated neighbourhoods or around parks are not suitable for 30mph traffic.
- NICE comes out for active travel and 20mph limits
“Reducing the maximum speed makes a much more liveable city with pleasant streets, significantly improves safety of all road and pavement users, especially of children.
“It also has a huge positive impact on cycling by allowing cyclists to keep up with the main flow of traffic or, when this is not possible, making cars pass much more safely.
“It even helps businesses by making streets more friendly and stopping easier for cars.
- TfL unveils 20mph speed limit pilot for major roads in London
In a blog post published yesterday, Bristol Cycling Campaign described the assertion that 20mph zones are “ridiculous” and “ludicrous” as “misinformed rubbish” and urged supporters to sign the petition in favour of keeping them – and indeed, extending them further throughout the city.
The blog post said: “The petitioners' argument that 20mph has made the roads more dangerous is particularly weak.”
Referring to the claim that lower speed limits are more dangerous due to their effect on driver behaviour, it added: “This statement is actually an insult to Bristol's motorists.
“It seems to suggest the city's drivers have no self-control or judgement and it must be a pretty bad driver who never takes their eye off the speedo, whatever the speed limit happens to be.
“We worry the signers of this petition have not properly thought through what they're signing up to.”
Bristol City Council is also resisting calls for the 30mph limit to be reinstated.
Earlier this month, Assistant Mayor Councillor Simon Cook told the Bristol Post: "There are tangible safety benefits of reducing speed to 20mph and research also shows that the real impact on journey times for drivers is remarkably small.
"The slower speed not only reduces the risk of injuries and fatalities, but it also encourages people to get out and walk or cycle.
"We are committed to making Bristol one of the most liveable cities in the world and to do that we need to make our neighbourhoods safer and healthier places to work and live."
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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43 comments
@ajuk
Packing so briefly, I agree with the DfT advice to a point however regarding your last post..
- the vast majority of the roads in the 20 zones are residential streets, many narrow but that should not be the prime concern.
- There are some weird choices of more arterial routes that got marked, some are still there and some have reverted (e.g. the Downs). No-one said it was perfect but it's a long way from a 'petty prohibition'.
- The free-flow 85% speeds are not known, the speed distribution on already restricted roads are known better and
* talk of means and percentiles are fairly irrelevant as the distributions are massively non-normal
* inner city streets speed distribution below the restriction cut-off are often dictated by congestion not risk assessment
* the speed ranges have changed due to changes in attitude in society, similar to drink driving. An example in Bristol is Henleaze Road which has long sections whose free speeds are in the 50+ mph range (and used to be a bit of a race track) but has been 30mph for years now without complaint or abuse.
- most of the roads were not designed for any speeds.
- the behaviour of the drivers in the 20 zones i've seen have been on the whole quite good (as far as speed is concerned).. again not perfect but far better than before.
- most of the complaints i've heard have been restricted to the more arterial routes, of which there are comparatively few and those have been changed in some cases... perhaps the focus should be shifted to a re-examination in those cases.
In short, don't throw the baby out with the bath water and don't over use the 85 percentile argument as it's ill defined in many (i'd say the vast majority) of the cases being considered.
Well rarely to I get stuck behind anyone actually doing 20 and I've been overtaken dangerously twice while driving along in the low 20s and a third time I was overtaken my a police car that wasn't on a blue light run.
You think average free flowing speeds on Henleaze Road are in the range of 50+ mph? Even if that were true how would a 20 limit help?
I think many modern roads were designed with a speed limit in mind, take the Temple Way Underpass, it was opened as a 40, it was designed to be 40 it's been 30 for donkey's years and yet the non-compliance was once measured at just over 76%. The relationship between reducing the speed limit below what most drivers can perceive to be a safe speed on a road and non compliance is almost linear.
It's interesting that you refer to them as 20 zones, 20 zones are roads that have had traffic calming added to them so that it's quite difficult to average over 25 even if you try, these are just sign only posted limits, and speed limits are not meant to be used for traffic calming.
That's a guess at a free flowing speed along the top of Henleaze Road into Northumbria Drive from driving it and seeing what used to happen on there - it's a big old road with reasonable sight lines... used to popular especially on the loop around Henleaze Road from Badminton school onto Northumbria Drive and through Northview (lot less cars in the '70s, something to bear in mind when talking about 85% limits).
I didn't say it would just that it's a road with arguably a much higher 85% speed than 30mph but has been that for a while now without any issues or over abuse.
Many modern roads may well have been, but most of the roads in the 20 zones here aren't modern.
No 20 zones are not that - this is manifestly true in Bristol if you look. It may be a nice theory but that's not born out in practice, nor have the planning documents i've seen dictated that. There is the odd bit of pavement build out on a couple of roads but most of them are 20mph by dint of signs and a couple of painted numbers on the road. I'm not sure what you trying to get at to be honest - 20mph limits can be irritating and open to abuse, they can also be useful in situations where speeds were typically higher in the past than was perhaps good in a safety aspect ... many of the Victorian residential roads in Bedminster and Southville for instance., where people habitually went down double parked roads not much more than 3 cars wide at 30. Why ? I'm not 100% sure but i'd suspect some of it is because 'everyone knows you can do 30 in town'. .. As it is we have no idea of what the free flowing 85% speeds in these roads should be now, as I was trying to say - i'm interested in your thoughts on that.
If it turned out that over 15% of road uses at the end of Henleaze Road are going at or over 50mph I will eat my hat, and yes if that was the case then you might need to raise the speed limit so that people have a more realistic expectation of speeds along there, although I would probably add traffic calming instead.
I remember driving down a narrow residential street with parked care on either side of me at what felt like full pelt, I then looked at my speedo and l chuckled as I was only doing 22.
If you're prepared to go 30 down a road like that then you're probably an idiot already, so speed limits don't help, heck you'd have to be a bit special to get to 20 on some of these roads, one of the arguments coming from the councillors was about how dangerous it would be for someone driving 30 through Windmill Hill, I was struggling to get my speedo to move driving through there the other day because mine only works from 10 upwards.
I doubt the 85th percentile speeds on ordinary residential non main roads has changed much at all, the average speed maybe 1-2mph slower, but that's for a 10mph reduction in speeds pedestrians are being told to expect traffic to be going a max of.
If you look at the crash map website you'll find that pedestrian deaths are almost all on main roads anyway, not sure how many are attributed to speed but in all of them either the pedestrian or the driver was being negligent.
You've got to remember most people tend to have an aversion to either running people over or having crashes.
Also it's important to remember this only criminalised people going slower than the posted speed that's been in place the last 80 years and not just people going close to 30 but also people travelling in the low 20s and they tend to be at the sensible end of the driver spectrum, why spend money criminalising them, why not spend more time going after wankers who piss around the streets like lunatics?
I was overtaken dangerously a 4th time on Wednesday night, again I wasn't even doing 20.
Seriously, think about it, who drives like that?
Who is it who doesn't already slow down for and give enough space to cyclists like they're already supposed to who are going to pay any attention to slower posted speed limits.
It just doesn't happen, there are more drivers who disregard the new limit who DO give you plenty of space.
All this does increase disdain towards cyclists and I want motorists to respect cyclists.
The problems and difficulties with the introduction of 20mph speed limits are fully covered here
https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/the-85th-percentile...
It is probably the best 'layman' explanation I've ever seen.
There is no political will to make roads 'safe'.
'Road safety' focuses pretty much on making it safer to crash your vehicle into any other object at all and allow you to step out, survey the carnage then mount an insulting defence to the bereaved families...government and the transport departments like this model, as do the insurerance industry who have valued everything a car can hit/destroy/kill at rates that allow their profit margins to remain high.
If it were to cost an insurer £5,000,000 damages to pay a bereaved family rather than say £120,000 they'd have an incentive to ensure only those responsible enough to drive were actually allowed on public highways, all done of course under a PR campaign centred on improving road safety. Not cynical, that's just how they'd do it.
So, all of the pretty signs and paint we see in various places are nothing more than a very sad facade by those who could make things change to convince people that they actually give a damn...they do not and they prove that each and every time a life is lost.
If we had similar death and injury figures in any other realm you can name there would be cause for public enquiry, can you imagine 5 or 6 deaths on the rail network per day and hundreds of other injuries of various severity?
The shoreham air crash is horrific but those death figures are less than a working weeks toll on the roads and where is the press interest, why no investigation there to 'ensure public safety?'
Fact is little will change whilst the public are addicted to their cars. If the public don't want change there are few to no politicians who will rock that boat. In short society can continue to embrace obesity, diabetes and daily violence that would be unacceotable in any other domain. As to how to change it...you probably need a group like ISIS to take an interest before Cameron will give it any attention.
I'm sure they must exist but I have never seen a speed camera on a road limited to 20 MPH.
Can somebody put my mind at ease and find one for me?
*Edit* Preferably one in or near Manchester so I can go marvel at the wonder of it myself, but I would be happy to see existence of them anywhere.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4306523,-0.0742189,3a,75y,40.44h,78.02t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srHqBHPiwDo3m7u7jgcKJrA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
This one is in South London, see the 20 mph repeater sign. The single camera has been replaced by two of the digital type a couple of months ago. I see these go off regularly when passing.
I'm against the blanket 20 mph limit.
It how people drive past and near you is what matters.
In a few places good idea but most places sorry it too much. I don't know how true but some one said in Lancashire they have stopped doing more as there may of been more accidents since the introduction of the 20th limits.
@mrmo
that is the problem
in Camden the local Police commander publicly stated in an interview with the Camden New Journal newspaper that they did not have the resources to enforce the 20mph blanket speed limit that had been introduced across the entire borough in 2012.
whether this was a dig at the Government cutting their resources, or a rare moment of clarity from a political operator, we cannot be sure. He is no longer in that job though
Would have thought that it would have been simpler to change 30 mph areas to the the Euro 25 mph (40 kph) limit, instead of ending up with all the changing from 30 to 20 we have at present.
One of the arguments used by the speed limits opponents is that a 20 mph limit is pointless because nobody obeys it. Sooo- if enough people commit burglary should we remove it from the statute books? If enough people "avoid" paying taxes should we forget about taxes altogether? Seems a very iffy argument to me...
Disclaimer: I live just outside Bristol and work in the city centre. I cycle to work, drive to work maybe twice a year. I love being overtaken on the approach to Jacobs wells road and then overtaking them right back halfway down the hill as they try to stay within the 20 mph limit...
Problem you have with the law is that there are not, and can never be, enough police. The law only works because the majority accept it. If you want 20mph limits to work you have to make drivers believe that it is worth their while to do so. ACPO coming out and saying they have no intention of enforcing sends out the complete wrong message.
I also use Jacob Wells every day and it's pretty rare that anyone drives down it at 20mph, the ones that do stick out like a sore thumb! You're a braver person than me overtaking people down there with the amount of people who suddenly decide they need to go up constitution hill, although at least you're safe from the emergency stop for a parking space lot.
I think George Ferguson might struggle to get another term as mayor. He's pretty unpopular with most people I know. His major decisions as mayor that I am aware of are all anti-motorist - 20mph zones, but also residents parking zones, road closures in the city centre on Sundays and the closure of the A4 a few times this summer for the enjoyment of families to cycle on. I can't really recall any other things he's done in Bristol, although I don't take the local paper so these may have passed me by.
Although very few people stick to 20 limits I do at least think it keeps people down to 30 more often. I always get the feeling that people see speed limits and add 10mph to them. Never seen a permanent speed camera in a 20 but they do occasionally do the mobile vans - my father in law got clocked doing 24 and got a ticket for it.
That's why it's important not to have petty prohibitions, it's leads to a disrespect and disregard to the law.
It's not a 'petty prohibition' FFS - and for what it's worth, the vast majority of the drivers in the 20mph zones in Southville / Bedminster / Ashton Vale I see do seem to get pretty close to it.. the odd idiot, that's for sure, but wasn't it ever thus.
You might have a point if they kept it just to narrow residential streets like they did in Cornwall, plenty of them have average speeds way below the previous 30mph limit anyway.
This is because most people tend to have an aversion to crashing or running people over. Some of the main roads included have their limits set way below not just the 85th percentile speed but significantly below even the mean average, some of the roads included are more modern roads specifically designed for a 30mph limit and have not been altered. If you set the speed limit significantly below what is intuitively safe for the conditions it ends up being treated with contempt by most drivers, and can serve to give pedestrians and other road users a false indication of traffic speeds, this has been known to be the case for a long time and is something the DfT advise against doing for that reason.
I live in a quiet suburb with long straight roads. It's been 20mph since December 2014 and the message is slowly getting through. I drive at 20mph and it frustrates the occasional driver behind me but tough. If they had obeyed 30mph we wouldn't need 20mph.
Speed kills. Road furniture and bumps are too expensive. 20mph ain't perfect but what's the alternative? Go back to letting people drive at 45mph in a 30mph as before?
For me speeding in residential areas is like drink driving. Some idiots are always going to do it but hopefully it will just as unacceptable in a few years.
I regularly cycle down a 20 limit road. It is blessed with one of those display your speed signs and one driver managed to pass me doing 38. I passed her shortly afterwards as she joined the 4 mile long queue into Kingston.
Those signs are great. They should put something like that in people's cars so they can check how fast they're going at any time.
As long as this 20mph speed limit doesn't apply to bikes as I can easily ride faster than this and don't want to held up because of them. I am not a fat, unfit plodder cyclist. I think the use of blanket 20mph speed limits across towns and cities is utterly absurd and am opposed to them. As the article states in the vicinity of schools, hospitals and councillors homes - yes, but not applied arbitarily on all roads in residential areas. To do so would be totally disproportionate and madness.
I live on a 20mph road, with speed bumps, it doesn't stop drivers doing 30+mph.
^^ this, yep live on similar road, its quite frightening to think how fast theyd drive if the speed bumps werent there, but they certainly dont limit drivers to even tackling them anywhere near 20mph,its 30+ at least, clearly theres a local garage and chiropractor making alot of money through repairs and so on.
but the problem is no enforcement & no sign of enforcement so drivers just ignore it, and consequently it makes no difference to cycling levels at all
we've had the 20mph blanket speed limit for over 3 years in London Borough of Camden and it has made absolutely no difference to motorists - all regularly speeding.
Local Police have admitted they cannot enforce the limit due to lack of resources.
You then wonder how much money has been wasted on:
-painting roundels on all the roads
-putting up speed limit signs
-advertising the speed limit when it was launched
Why bother unless you are going to properly enforce it to change driver behaviour? It just stinks of easy policy with no practical result.
If you regularly ride in Regent's Park you will see drivers going past you easily doing 50-60mph.
I often wonder why the local Police don't sit in an unmarked car in the Park with a radar gun and ticket all the speeding motorists. But from what I understand (I might be wrong), the fines go to central Government rather than directly to local Policing, so there is no incentive?
It's20mph everywhere close to me. The only time drivers obey this is when a cop car is insight otherwise it's the usual 35mph
I was wondering what insurance companies take on it would be. Say if someone has a crash in a 20 zone, and they were going 30, surely the insurance companies going to say "bingo! ha! you were speeding" regardless of what the cps/police care about. That way they can dodge out of paying out, that would be a good incentive for people to drive properly.
Having the 20mph limit means that people are tending to drive a bit slower which makes it nicer to cycle round Bristol. And driving at 20mph? You catch a ton of cars behind you. Still, I welcome it and any other effort that is being made by George Ferguson to get people out of their cars. It's easy to say it's being done wrong, or that too much money is being spent, or it should be spent on some other method, but it's more than other council appear to be doing. As for enforcing the limit, that's beyond his remit, but at least he's provided the opportunity for it to be possible.
I drove through Bristol this weekend for the first time in a few months, and found that the limit didn't actually make much difference to my travelling speed anyway. The wife didn't actually notice the difference until I pointed it out to her.
There were one or two questionable points where 20 didn't really seem necessary, and a number of points where it seems to randomly switch between 20, then 30, then 20 again. But other than that, I'd say it made for a more pleasurable drive.
You're always going to get some prat that needs to speed everywhere, but the flow of traffic in general seemed the same as it always does.
There are so may traffic lights around Bristol, that you don't get time to get up to 20 before you've got to stop again anyway!
It's true that drivers don't take any notice of 20mph limits, but that doesn't mean they're pointless. There have been speeding fines in Bristol's 20mph zones, and I bet they're levied at slightly lower speeds than would be the case in 30 zones: not 20, but say 35 rather than 45. More importantly, if 20mph were to become the default built-up area limit, it would feed through to a general reduction in speed in towns and possibly country lanes too.
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